User:Qie Niangao/Traffic Exercise

I admit the distinction is lost on me between a thing's popularity and whether a lot of people like it

But anyway, I'll try the test of Search to see if traffic score helps or hurts the results.

I tried "trumpet" as suggested in an earlier post, and didn't find any value at all to the traffic scores for that search term: after skipping the first three gamed slots, the rest were indistinguishable to me. But that's just one word. So to play along, I'll try the suggested "rooster." (I'm not quite sure what I should want to find with that search... for the sake of argument, a pet rooster, then.) And I'll try 18 more things that I've created and either sold or given away at some point in time, so I can at least judge whether what I find is any good. Okay, here goes:

0. rooster. Only 3 results. 1st: traffic of 366, has a picture of a rooster, but it's not for sale. 2nd: traffic of 23, has a rooster right on its parcel snapshot and what looks like a rooster for sale, with preternaturally small feet; can't tell what it actually does, but I might buy it if I wanted a rooster. 3rd: traffic of 15, seem to be 1-prim cut-outs of animals; nothing has "show in search" checked, though, and I can't find the rooster. So, what did traffic do to help this search? Well, perhaps it's not fair, because there are only three results. But it's worth noting that Search All returns a *lot* more results, including the rooster pets from NIRVANA and Anipets which can't be found in Places because they aren't in the parcel name or description.

1. fireplace. Hundreds of results. The first two have over 100K traffic, so must be gamed, then it falls off more or less continuously for about four pages until it bottoms out at 0 traffic. Tried 3rd rank, at 30385: gamed by a money-giver orb--bunch of avatars sitting around the beach. (Is it traffic fraud? They don't seem to be bots, and they're not even camping--they're just waiting for the game to pay out. Why did we think 'sploders and such were obsolete?) Maybe try some place further down the list; picking 8085, which at least has "FIREPLACES" in its name: no obvious gaming here, but the products are crap (somebody bought a particle fire and put it in every conceivable consumable). So should I go back up the list to find something better because it gets more traffic? Skipping texture places... here's one at 24415--nope, box of bots at 250m.

Okay, I don't think it's possible to shop for "fireplace" using Search Places; this isn't really a good test because at this point, ordinarily, I would use a more specific query string, so let's try:

1a. +low-prim +fireplace. Three results, Traffic 293, 222, and 95 respectively. 1st: 6, 7, or 8 prims, bad fire texture anim, some scripted to retexture the fireplace--but with mostly library and freebie textures. 2nd: 5 or 7 prims, much better textures, but unscripted. 3rd: Widest selection, cheapest, probably the best textures, 6-8 prims. (weird that the low-prim places all use prim flames, btw.) In this case, the lower the traffic, the better the product, so traffic was counterproductive here, but there were only 3 results, so it's not a big deal.

2. bathroom sink. Just one result. Traffic: 99. So traffic neither helped nor hurt here.

3. curtains. First result obviously gamed. 2nd: box of bots at 1000m. skipping down... 5th: bots at 450m.... 10th: traffic seems to be from actual avatars here, but turns out the products are mostly freebies; checking "All" search page for this site, no item on the parcel contains "curtains" in its name. 15th: Okay, again by cheating with the All page, I could find curtains here--they're awful, textures with badly cropped edges displayed to maximize the alpha-sorting problem. So, try 14th to see if the higher traffic is better quality...actually not bad. Only thing is, this place happens to be the very first result in Search All. So why did I have to spend 20 minutes "bucking traffic" in Search Places? But to be fair, maybe traffic helps by weeding out bad results, pushing them to the bottom? To test that, tried the first 0-traffic listing... and it's good! Very good, actually. They aren't sculpties nor scripted, but they're very professional textures on flexis, probably what most people would actually want when searching for "curtains." So, not only did gamed traffic make these results harder to use, but the ungamed traffic actually gave consistently worse results, too.

4. beach blanket. Just 3 results again. 1st: traffic 7881--can't figure out how: no obvious gaming, but no shoppers either; there are beach blankets: primitive (a separate poseball prim), stock Craig Altman resale poses. 2nd: traffic 333, pretty much the same products. 3rd: traffic 1, Well, a different product at least, kind of a picnic blanket with MLP and several Craig Altman and other poses, for more money. Anyway, traffic neither helped nor hurt on this one.

5. animation server. No results at all in Search Places. (Search All returns one.)

6. teleporter. Over 100 results, lots of them traffic gamed. Skipping to 4258, apparently ungamed: a fairly popular model from a well-known weapons merchant. Tried a couple more at 4106, 3594: mostly resellers of one very common brand, no evident traffic gaming. And then, at 2769: a parcel gamed to death at 800m, offering "Free gaming, cash prizes, and camping". So it's not so simple to skip over the gamed parcels--if one does, one absolutely will skip past legit parcels too.

7. airplane. 50 results. Difficult to guess what's gamed here. 3265: fairly low-key alt/bot gaming. 2820: a rental mall with lucky chairs, and "skill gambling" games. 721: no gaming, creator on-site, and some pretty darn good planes. Skipping down to 151: nice ones here, too, and interesting setting (although a lot of sculpties, which have obvious disadvantages for physical vehicles that are supposed to collide correctly, but they're pretty). Skipping down to a traffic of 1: Yeah, quite a crappy airplane here. So in this search, traffic actually provides some relevant information for the listings I checked. (Just one thing though: Where's Abbott's? Not to be found in Search Places with "airplane", but appears in Classified sidebar of All. Not the fault of traffic, though.)

8. fishing boat. 6 results. 1st: 2064, no gaming; no fishing boat either (apparently 7seas fishing and a boat rezzer here somewhere but not listed in search). 2nd: 1411 and a very nice build with a quite attractive fishing boat for L$285. (No way to test it, but looks good.) 3rd: 936, "...Fishing, Boat Slip Rentals" not fishing boats. 4th: 26, less appealing fishing boat for L$450. 5th: 10, very nice fishing boat but as the build, not a product. 6th: 9, actually a sub-parcel of the 4th result. So really just two results, and the higher-trafficked parcel is both more interesting and has a more appealing product.

9. hoverboard. 8 results. First two really the same outfit on two adjacent sims; top traffic 6917--not exactly gamed: this is a sports sim, so folks hang around and play with the products in addition to buying them here; seem to be pretty sophisticated product (for L$875) and a fun place. 3rd: 1119, no idea where this traffic comes from, it's just a vendor full of vehicles (hybrid w/ high-prim attachments); no way to see them rezzed, but the pictures look okay, priced L$280-480. 4th: 82, Simple hoverboards for L$250, some retexture according to speed, no way to test. 5th: 55, another outlet for the 3rd result, this time with some products rezzed, but still no way to test. 6th: subparcel of 1 and 2. 7th: 12, other products, but looks like out of the hoverboard business. 8th: 2, phenomenally ugly hoverboards in vendors for L$20, no demo just like everywhere else. No way to know whether any of these are any good, but general impression of the four products seem ranked more or less consistently with traffic for these parcels.

10. multi-person shower. No results. (nor in Search/All).

11. nature sounds. 3 results. 1st: 827, to be fair, this appears to be a sophisticated shop, with a huge selection of (rather pricy) audio files--but I can't find here what I was actually seeking: a scripted product that changes nature sounds between day and night. 2nd: 44, smaller selection, strictly nature sounds, not the product sought. 3rd: 15, a different small selection, still not the product. I don't think I learned anything from this one.

12. patio umbrella. No results. (lots of results in Search/All)

13. +pregnant +tummy. No results. In Search/All, 28 matches.

14. prim baby. 21 results. 1st is gamed, but by just a handful of camping chairs and a whole "club" full of avatars apparently waiting for the camping chairs (?). 2nd: 6365, no gaming that I can find, manager on-site said the place is often busy with real customers; extremely ugly babies for L$1800. 3rd: 4193, slightly gamed (2 "actor bots" idle at 400m) terrible build, bizarre combo of a "restaurant" and a maternity clinic, babies less ugly, L$1900 without services. 4th: 3496, proprietress on premises building, custom babies apparently well-made. 5th: 1814, freakishly photoreal sculpted hyper-animated babies (really quite disturbing but technically challenging), L$3000-3500. 6th: 1259--lots of unrelated stores all on this same parcel, Brazilian, babies are very crudely formed, L$1500-2600 depending on scripting, without services. 7th: 621, another terrible build with wide array of "mall" content, very crude babies L$2000 for English, L$3000 for Spanish and Portuguese(!?). 8th: 581, another mall of unrelated stuff, with a "gold coin" dispenser that every 5 minutes gives L$1 each to avatars present (but obviously not that effective at attracting traffic)--no prim babies on the parcel. ...skipping... 12th: 432, very nice build, wider selection of babies (the scary photoreal for about $3500 as well as less scary non-sculpted for L$1200), this is the one I'd choose, of the ones sampled. ...skipping... 20th: 23, same non-sculpty prim babies as 12, L$1500, much less well-appointed setting and no services available. To summarize this messy category: the top ungamed slots are not very good, and the bottom ones aren't either; the best seems to be in the middle of the ungamed traffic rankings, and I have no idea why.

15. mirror. 73 results. 1st: 15122, bot-gamed. 2nd: 5296 appears not to be gamed, nice place, mirrors don't have a mirror script (decorative). 3rd: 4907 ungamed, big-box warehouse, but product is a script to mirror prims. 4th: 4394 camper gamed, scripted mirrors but 3 prims for L$350 and no scripted texture nor animation selection. 5th: 2871, gamed by one alt/bot, weird "mirrors" use profile-pic script. 6th: 2240 ungamed, prim-mirror script; 7th: 1476 slightly alt-gamed, textures only. 8th: 1114 ungamed, "mirror" is fortune-telling attachment(huh?). 9th: 965 ungamed, good mirror but for use not sale. 10th: 860 ungamed, true scripted mirrors (no anim selection), but scripts are buggy. 11th: same as 3rd. ... this could take forever to find anything worth buying; skipping arount at random... traffic=2:*very* pretty stuff, but mirrors decorative. traffic=7: decorative boxed. traffic=19: this is the first one I found that has the correct, working script (for L$70). In this search, traffic certainly didn't help, and the only acceptable result found was at a very low traffic score, so arguably ungamed traffic actually hurt.

16. terraforming tool. 2 results, neither gamed (but empty camping spot at 2nd), both well-known acceptable products. Traffic didn't matter.

17. club light. (initially tried "light ring"--that's what I'm looking for, specifically) 8 results. 1st: 2977, single alt/bot, very poor product, others from affiliate vendor (of queen of club equipment traffic gaming). 2nd: 2659--lots of gambling machines--is that gaming traffic?, more relevant products here but very poor quality. 3rd: 1503, outpost of 1st. 4th: 156, very nice lighting product here, but not the light ring I was trying to find; still, by far the best product in these results. 5th: 115, close to a light ring effect but for ridiculous L$1999 price (this seller is gaming the hell out of other parcels here, to the point of lagging the sim, but not the club lights parcel). 6th: 17, found nothing relevant on parcel. 7th: 8, weird mixture of neons, surrounded by BIAB junk and resale of ancient freebies. 8th: 0: Actually not terrible, I've seen these products in use, and sensibly priced (L$99). In this search, two best products were in the middle and bottom of ungamed traffic; at best, traffic was noise on top of mostly poor results.

18. contest board. 48 results, but mostly are advertising a contest board for *use* (to encourage traffic), not as a product; based on descriptions, can skip to #13: 2937, *very* primitive script for L$399, traffic seems to come from wandering newbies at neighboring tutorials by same selling group. ...skip over clubs to traffic=1146, seems ungamed, selection of well-known products at L$1850-L$2500... traffic=487:not as well known product for L$1200, but seems quite good (and copy perm, which is a big plus for this product)... t=228: another fairly common one, L$1500 or L$4000 for copiable. t=183 nope: Zyngo contest board. t=165:different product, not bad, specifically for long-term large-scale contests, L$1850. t=157:very primitive, for L$999. T=62, product not yet for sale. t=44, old-school text scripting (slow-rez)--same prices as t=228 but not as good. t=11:probably the most sophisticated scripting of the bunch, and innovative, but very pricey at L$3899, no-copy. t=8:separate parcel from t=487, perhaps to game keywords?